Episode 8 of TUF: Live this past Friday drew just 929,000 viewers, a new series low. It marks the second time this season, and in the series’ history, that TUF has dipped below one million viewers for an episode.

“As far as the show goes, it’s a (expletive) home run for FX,” said White recently. “It’s on Friday nights. Friday nights they do movies and reruns. We’re the No. 1 thing in males 18-34 every Friday night. If not, we’re No. 2 if they pull something off that beats us. (FX is) happy as a pig in (expletive).

“For me, I want to pull 3 million viewers on FX. We’re No. 1 on Friday nights every week, which they’ve never had. The (UFC 145) prelims on Saturday on FX were No. 1. It’s a home run for them, but it’s not necessarily a home run for me.”

This is The Ultimate Fighter’s first season on FX, which happened as part of the UFC’s new television deal with the Fox family of networks, of which FX is a part. Friday night is also a departure from the show’s run on Spike TV.

I see no benefit to the live format they’re doing this year. TUF has run it’s course, time to put it to bed and come up with a new concept.

I said it before, they need to go the “reality TV” route with a select group of fighters (maybe 2 or 3 guys from the same camp and their trainers + training partners) and follow them in the 2 months leading up to, during and after a fight. Think “TUF” meets “Primetime”. They could continue to build new guys by exposing them to the casual viewer / fan and push and upcoming PPV at the same time. Getting fans emotionally attached to fighters has worked well so far and a concept like this (or something similar) seems like the next step in the evolution of this thing. Can’t continue to grow with a product that’s become stagnant.

bernardmartin

What’s so hard to understand? The show on Spike was on Wednesday nights. More males 18-34 are home watching. Friday nights on FX, more 18-34 males are out. DUH….it’s not rocket science…